Expect a Sinofsky-led Microsoft to be totally locked down. One of the most common comments about Sinofsky is that he will not share information — even with other Microsoft product groups — until he’s ready to do so.

One former veteran said, “It feels pretty weird when a super senior person inside the company whose job description is to know what’s going on can’t even find out what another team's doing.”

This level of secrecy is standard at a lot of consumer-oriented companies like Apple and Amazon.

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But it can pose a problem for the big companies who are Microsoft’s most important customers, as well as the PC makers who need to plan for the next release of Windows.

“Enterprises don’t buy the current product nearly as much as the vision …They get really frustrated with not having information earlier. Same with OEMs [PC manufacturers], they are not getting information soon enough to know where Microsoft is going and how to react,” says one former employee.

Sinofsky wrote a blog post entitled “Transparency and Translucency” where he explained his reasoning: If product plans leak early, customers and partners make plans based on information that may later change. That costs real money.

And forget about timing information releases around the news cycle.

Sinofsky wrote, “Notice that these audiences are our customers and partners and that a non-goal is allowing the news cycle or needs of the press to drive disclosure timing and contents.”

In fact, one person told us that Sinofsky has been pushing Microsoft’s public relations group to speak less to the press, and to reconsider showing at big public events like the Consumer Electronics Show (which Microsoft will skip next year for the first time in its history).

As far as leaks go, Sinofsky has zero tolerance. One former Windows group employee said that several people were fired on the spot when leaks about Windows 7 were traced back to them. Another former Microsoft employee said that the company has a forensics team that it uses to track leaks, particularly from people in outward facing roles (customer relations, public relations, and so on).

The message has been passed along.

Current Microsoft employees are extremely reluctant to discuss Sinofsky or Windows even on deep background — not only with reporters, but with anybody. One former member of the Windows group told us that when he brings Sinofsky up in conversation to old friends still at the company, their eyes glaze over and they change the subject.

As for Sinofsky himself, he declined all comment on this story, and has never cooperated on a profile. A representative explained, “he doesn’t like profiles.”

Sinofsky would also be an absolute leader. Several people told us he demands 100 percent loyalty to his methods — and he can be ruthless and backhanded in undermining people who disagree with him.

One person who worked with him says, “He’s obviously incredibly hard-headed. In any argument, he really sticks to his guns. In any conversation, any attempt to change his position is not successful.”

A former exec says Sinofsky has to be a dictator because the old way was not working, as the problems with Windows Vista showed. “Because of the scale, he needed to be more military-style and more top down. Needed. Others can and did try other approaches, but it just doesn't work.”

Sinofsky welcomes debate and feedback to a point. A person who worked at Microsoft Research back in the early 2000s says that Sinofsky was “pretty legendary for being someone who's up on email all the time, for always answering his own email. He’ll take feedback and have discussions with some intern who just started.”

But his tendency to be on email all the time can have a dark side as well.

“If you ever get in an email war with the guy you’re dead,” one former exec told us, “because he can write tomes, and apparently at any hour of the day.”

This person and several others also said that Sinofsky would go to great lengths to undermine people who don’t agree with him.

For instance, this person told us, Sinofsky sometimes “could find only one or two people who’d agree with him, so he’d just sit there and chisel. For most executives who are inspired and trying to build businesses and grow a vision, life's too short for that kind of thing.“

It’s telling that “One Strategy,” the book Sinofsky wrote on corporate strategy with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti, starts with the following sentence: “One Strategy describes a general approach for organizations to achieve a single, shared strategic perspective and translate that perspective into action.” (Emphasis ours.)

In an organization with a single shared perspective, there’s not much room for dissent.